​CLUBS AND SOCIETIESEvery university has clubs and societies, set up by the students, run by the student members and doing whatever the students want. They’re almost always part-funded by small membership fees, less small contributions from the students’ union (who also tend to lay down a few rules and guidelines such as that any student can join and that there be no financial corruption, no racism — nothing too onerous).Some universities — such as Birkbeck, Buckingham, the Courtauld and London Institutes — only have a handful. Others — such as Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Hull, Lancaster, Manchester and Oxbridge — have a hundred or more.They split into various kinds:

The sports clubs, which often field the university’s teams.

The academic clubs, which are usually course-related and are often run by a brown-noser in the department.

The bog-standard hobby and interest clubs that most universities have, including everything from sci-fi to film, photography to animal rights, Amnesty to the orchestra.

The political clubs — usually party-related and often fielding candidates for SU elections.

The religious clubs.

The international and cultural societies, which often provide a meeting place and a forum for particular ethnic groups (such as Afro-Caribbeans) and overseas students from a certain country.

The welfare groups, which, like the international and cultural societies exist to support minorities and special interest groups such as postgrads, mature students, students with families, and lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender students.

The off-the-wall and wacky clubs.

In the last category, it’s hard to believe that some of them actually do anything and weren’t set up just because someone though of an amusing name. For example, there are the various Odd Socs around the country (if they got together surely they could make some pairs), Bristol’s Flat Caps & Ferrets Society and Sunderland’s Hat Society.

If you have your own freakish fascination, you can bet there are other students out there somewhere who share your fetish and who may be only too keen to share it. Indeed, chances are they’ve already set up a club at some university to cater for your obsession. If it’s important to you, it may be a clincher when it comes to picking a university.However, if you find yourself sadly unique in your devotion to an unusual pastime, never fear. If you can persuade enough other students at your university to join your strange society, so long as it’s (more or less) legal, you may be able to start your own. Of course, it’s easier if it’s already there.

There are few times in anyone’s life that they get quite such a good opportunity to become involved with activities other than work, families and DIY as when they’re at university. Either they’re too busy, they don’t have access to the facilities, they’re too expensive, or they don’t know anyone else who’s interested.As a student, none of these excuses is valid.

And, while this is true for just about anything, it’s perhaps truest of all for sport.Student sports are some of the best in the world.​Every four years the World Student Games come around. Britain usually does pretty well (better than in most international sporting competitions) and many of the competitors are the same as those who turn up at the following Olympics.UK universities, meanwhile, compete against each other every year in competitions and leagues in every sport imaginable.Many of our greatest sporting heroes competed at university level before going on to greater fame. To name but a few: Harold Abrahams, Steve Backley, Sebastian Coe, Ted Dexter, Phil de Glanville, Tanni Grey, Gavin Hastings, Nasser Hussein, David Moorcroft, Victor Obogu, Matthew Pinsent, Steve Redgrave and David Weatherall.

And it’s not as if they only became good once they’d completed their studies. Will Carling, for instance, went straight from captaining his university rugby team to historic success captaining England’s.Out there now are tomorrow’s gold medallists and, as a student, you get to play alongside them or perhaps against them or, even, be them.

The Varsity Boat Race is a highlight of the national sporting calendar and it is genuine students tugging at those oars.These levels of achievement are pretty ordinary in many of the UK’s universities.But what if you’re no champion?These very high standards are no more than the tip of an iceberg of health and fitness, with some of the submerged parts being more used to sit-downs than sit-ups.At most universities even the worst athlete, the most feeble wimp, can participate just for fun.Different universities have different policies — sometimes it’s not even a matter of policy, it just turns out that way — but as often as not the emphasis is on sport for all rather than on sport for the bionic.

Sports are not necessarily a blokey thing either. Sure, there are the rugger buggers and the oarsmen oafs, but women’s sport is taken as seriously and played as competitively as anything the boys get up to with their funny shaped balls or when they shove their oars in.What makes students so good?Apart from the fact that there are so many of them (nearly a million students in the UK) and many of them are at an age of peak performance, it’s largely down to opportunity.

Many universities have vast tracts of land rolled, mowed and painted all in the name of sport. They have sports halls like airplane hangars and athletics tracks that would be the envy of most sizeable towns.Loughborough University — renowned for its sporting prowess, not to mention its sports-based courses — has five-star facilities that include four sports centres, two gyms, a dance studio, two swimming pools, seven squash courts, two floodlit all-weather pitches, an all-weather athletics stadium, acres of playing fields, the Dan Maskell tennis centre, multigyms, a martial arts dojo, badminton courts, plus equipment and playing areas for table-tennis, basketball, netball and many, many more. Locally, there are also opportunities for everything from watersports to pot-holing, riding to rambling. And all of them are absurdly cheap.

Loughborough’s facilities are among the best, but it’s far from the only university with enough sporting muscle to snatch, clean, and jerk even the laziest couch potato into activity. And often there’s no charge at all.For every sport, there’s a club or a team of like-minded enthusiasts ready to rumble. But you can’t play every sport at every university.

If you’re goofy for golf, for instance, don’t apply to City University, where the facilities in general aren’t bad — but being based in Central London, they’ve not been able to provide access to a golf course.You’d be better off at St Andrew’s, which not only has a cheap course for students, but you’re within putting distance of the Royal & Ancient Club and where golfing glory can even earn you a scholarship.Although there are the likes of Loughborough and Sheffield, whose amenities put the fun into funding, there are also places like Bath Spa University College where the tennis courts were turned into a car park, and Abertay Dundee with only a fitness room to call its own, and where students otherwise have to rely on what the town can offer.If you’re the sporty sort or, indeed, if you’re ever motivated to move a muscle, the huge difference in levels of sports facilities should play a part in bringing your favourite university to the top of your personal league.

It’s not only wandering minstrels that provide the music menu at universities. Many students — and not just music students — can knock out a tune or two for themselves.In fact, that’s how some of the best bands started — from Blur (Goldsmiths College) to Underworld (Cardiff Uni).​It’s not just a chance to meet a bassist and drummer (who’re also into your favoured mix of indie folk and garage) to complete your innovative new group. Universities (or more usually students’ unions) also provide the rooms and the opportunity to rehearse and the platform for your first (and maybe last) gig. Not everywhere offers the same opportunities though.

Of course, music’s not all about bands. Many universities have an orchestra, a choir, string quartets, even an opera group.

But as with bands, it’s not simply a matter of the other people, but the facilities, the rehearsal space and the potential audience.And again, tastes and facilities are not the same everywhere, so if music is your food of love, play on by picking the right university.Inevitably, extra-curricular music tends to have more tempo where there’s an up-beat academic music department.​Check out this Independent article "Seven best ways to get involved with music at university".

MUSIC VENUES​Check out a tour poster for any band and you’ll see the same venues listed time and again. Unless they’re supergroups who only do binocular gigs, many of those venues will be universities and SUs. Take Manchester University, for instance, where a list of gigs from the past couple of years reads like a pretty decent compilation album: Sugababes, Jurassic 5, Jill Scott, Nickleback, Roni Size, The Strokes, White Stripes, Coldplay, Moloko and many, many more.But big gigs may not be your preferred route to going deaf.In which case, you’ll appreciate some of the other universities. The ones that just don’t have a venue big enough or perhaps where they’re just not interested. The focus there is more on local bands, jazz nights, the students’ own bands or on trying to discover little-known talent (and failing).Then, of course, there’s classical music. Recitals, concerts, opera, choirs — at some universities melodies seem to seep from the stonework. At the Royal College of Music, students regularly burst into spontaneous performances — a bit like the Kids from Fame.If a university can’t offer your preferred strains of strings or bumping bass, there are always the local venues. The story’s the same, though — not everywhere has Birmingham’s NEC for megagigs, but nor do they all have the buskers on the beach at Brighton or the folk bands in the (real) Irish pubs of Belfast.

​MEDIA

Most universities have a student newspaper and many of them have been around for years — longer even than many of the nationals. They’re populated with eager student reporters desperate to get relevant experience so they can break into the profession when they graduate, alongside others, just as eager, doing it for the wheeze. But they don’t just need journos — people are needed to handle ad sales, distribution, design and so on, so there are opportunities galore.The styles of student papers vary as much as they do in Fleet Street — there are tabloidy gutter dwellers and high fallutin’ papers of record, propaganda sheets for the union or the university and independent bastions of integrity. Some universities, such as York, even have competing newspapers and many have not only newspapers, but arts magazines, creative writing magazines and even wood-wasters for individual clubs and societies.​Thanks to desktop publishing and colour printing, the standards reach professional heights (as the annual awards ceremonies show — yes, even student journos have their own Oscars), but also depths so low that the only place appropriate for some student papers is the toilet — although, fortunately, that’s a great place for them to get read. Captive audience, you see. (Gossip and what’s-on flyers tacked to the backs of loo cubicle doors are quite common and are known, inevitably, as bogsheets.)But the press don’t have a media monopoly.Many universities have their own radio stations. Sometimes they have FM licences and broadcast locally as well as on campus. But at other places, it’s a couple of guys playing their own records and transmitting a signal so weak that it barely makes it out of hearing range. Still, it’s better than nothing for trying out your fabadozie pop-picker DJ stylie.There’s even student TV and, even though they usually broadcast on a closed circuit and with a budget that even Channel 5 would consider tight, the conditions have forced some university stations to get pretty inventive.Not only are student media great fun to make — you have to wonder whether the readers, listeners and viewers enjoy it as much as the writers, editors and producers — they can be a big help in landing a job in the media. As often as not, rather than do a degree in media studies, you’d do better to study something totally different and throw your heart into the university newspaper, radio or TV station.If you’re thinking along these lines, be careful you don’t get landed working for a paper that’s still produced with a John Bull printing set and which reads like a school magazine where everyone played truant. Choose a university with facilities and a reputation in media.

​CHARITY

If you see a bunch of people dressed as tarts, vicars, nurses and Frankenstein’s monster pushing a hospital bed down a street, waving and rattling tins, there’s a good chance they’re students. If you see someone walking along being apparently followed by a gnome, there’s a good chance they’re both students.And if you see naked parachutists with water pistols, there’s a good chance they’re students, too.This isn’t only because students are weird. It’s often all in the dubious name of charity or ‘rag’, as most universities call the student organisation that arranges these and many similar stunts in an effort to raise funds for good causes.And it’s no mean feat. Some individual student rags — through sponsored events, sales of merchandise and rag mags (usually cheaply produced and stuffed with highly un-PC jokes) and other fund-raising activities which regularly push the boundaries of legality — raise over two-hundred thousand quid a year.It’s only the best — such as Loughborough — that hit that kind of target. Most do well to get into the tens of thousands but, given how poor students are, that’s not bad. Students’ own poverty has, however, seen a few rags dwindle and die.Much to the relief of lecturers, university authorities, the local population and the police, often the effort is focused on a single week (rag week) of mayhem and disruptive antics.By the way, if any of this sounds familiar, the tame-by-comparison Comic Relief was inspired by student rags (with a bit of Band Aid thrown in).

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​COMMUNITY ACTION

Rags may be fun with the excuse of doing good, but at many universities the students do good with the excuse that it’s also fun. Some community action organisations in universities involve hundreds, even thousands of students in projects that help the elderly, the sick, kids, people with disabilities, the homeless and deprived, prisoners, environmental projects or the local community. They’re run by students (working with community groups) and often there’s a student sabbatical to oversee them.Hull University and Leeds are especially lively, while at some universities there’s no such programme at all and, all too often, the town-gown relationship suffers as a result.

​DRAMA AND ARTS

Universities often have certain cliques. There are the political hacks, the sporty yahoos and there are the thesps. Not every university has them, but those that do are often quite pleased about it because they often provide high standard entertainment, producing and acting in plays, musicals, light opera, dance, comedy revues and stand-up.Where there’s a drama course, there’s usually a glut of thesps — or luvvies, if you prefer — not least because there’s usually a well-equipped theatre and rehearsal rooms.But thesps don’t need theatres — they’ll find anywhere to perform, from halls to lecture rooms, or even outside. However, a theatre’s usually a good starting point to prick theatrical sensibilities and get the star-struck strutting their stuff upon whatever makeshift stage they can find. Some universities, especially if they don’t have a theatre, never manage to lure the thesps into the limelight.The highlight of the theatrical year for students is usually the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where there is a proud tradition of performing student productions to average audiences of three American tourists and a dog.Student theatre is often a lot more professional than your regular am dram and it’s a classic example of an opportunity for those with a little talent (or sometimes a lot) to have a go at something they’d never risk professionally — although many, in fact, do. That doesn’t just go for the actors, but for the directors, designers, lighting technicians and other backstage boys and girls too.

​THEATRES

Professional theatre isn’t a luxury that students can afford every night, but most theatres offer serious discounts on student tickets if the house isn’t full. In London, this can mean students get into West End shows at the last minute for under a tenner.Elsewhere... well, many towns have theatres showing nothing but summer specials and Xmas pantos (starring former soap actors and other D-list celebs) with nothing but Alan Ayckbourn plays in between.On the other hand, companies like the RSC, Cheek-by-Jowl and Shared Experience take superb shows on tour in what used to be a tokenistic, but is now a genuine, effort to get the arts out of the capital and into the regions.Meanwhile, in rooms above pubs and community workshops, there’s a wealth of talent to be discovered very cheaply. (As well as a wealth of crap.)Although they’re outside term-time, a mention must go to the Edinburgh Festivals — the world’s biggest arts jamboree, where every nook and cranny becomes a theatre. It’s a great place for students to watch (or star in) drama and comedy, not to mention find work.But often some of the best theatres in town are at the universities themselves, with top-flight stages and wings, lighting rigs and backstage facilities. They attract not only a regular round of visits from touring companies, but plenty of student productions too.Student drama is often every bit as good as professional work done on bigger budgets and charging a lot more at the box office. After all, there are plenty of drama students out there and a lot of actors first catch the stage bug at university.On the other hand, some student productions are an embarrassment to everyone involved and the university ‘theatres’ that host them are sometimes barely worthy of the name.

​RELIGIONS

Universities are a slice of life and in every slice you have your fruits, your nuts and your cherries. Push doesn’t mean to imply anything by that other than that all the variety of life — including a range of religions — is represented in UK universities. Some, such as Durham (with its huge cathedral and historical Anglican ties) have a strong Christian presence (especially at St John’s College). Others, for some reason, attract large populations of Jews (Manchester and Leeds, especially), Muslims (the School of Pharmacy, for instance), Hindus and every other flavour of faith you can imagine.Most universities have at least one chaplain, usually an Anglican to start with, then perhaps adding others such as Roman Catholics, ecumenical, interdenominational, Methodists, Presbyterians, Orthodox and Reform Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and so on as necessary.Some universities have a chapel, too, and often a mosque or a prayer room — and, of course, there may be other worship shops locally.Depending on whether there are enough god-squadders, there may well be religious clubs of every hue. In fact, you sometimes need to watch out for religious groups on campus — sects and cults have been known to target students.Religion may be something you can carry with you, but if the trappings of a particular place to pray and fellow believers to do it with are important to you, you may want to rule out anywhere that doesn’t meet your creed needs.

​DEBATING​For some students, seminars and SU meetings provide more than enough argumentative chit chat, but some universities also have a talk-shop that’s more than your regular club or society. There are, for example, the Oxbridge debating unions — not to be confused with their students’ unions — where formal debates take place (often in black tie) before the audience votes on who won and then goes home and forgets about it. There’s often a fairly right-wing flavour to it all.Oxford Union, in particular, has attracted some pretty awesome names either to debate or just to give talks, including, for instance, Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela and Kermit the Frog. Many former Union Presidents — such as Ted Heath and Benazir Bhutto — have gone on to be as famous as the guests.These debating unions don’t only debate. They have headquarters like smaller but posher versions of most SUs, with a bar, library and a few social facilities. They charge for membership (none too cheap) and some students find them quite elitist (and not in a good way).

A few other universities, especially the Oxbridge reject universities, have similar cosy arrangements (the Durham Union Society, for instance). Other universities, however, have debating clubs (or ‘mooting’ societies, as they’re sometimes known) that are more down-to-earth, such as Aberdeen University’s ‘Debater’.

ANYTHING ELSE

​It’s not just clubs and societies that you can set up. Universities weren’t born with radio stations and theatre groups. Some student started them up once upon a time (usually with SU funding) and others kept them going. Whatever your interest, the right university for you is a stimulating environment in which to get your act together.Every university has a unique set of clubs, groups, and organisations supporting students’ interests as diverse as dogs and dandelions.

What is more, these activities don’t exist in a vacuum. They affect the atmosphere of the place, define it even. Somewhere with active Christian groups feels different from somewhere without them and somewhere with thesps in every nook feels different from somewhere where the nooks are occupied by hacks or rugger buggers or business students.

​Choose a university where your interests are catered for and you’ll usually find the atmosphere slots right into place too.​

​CLUBS AND SOCIETIESEvery university has clubs and societies, set up by the students, run by the student members and doing whatever the students want. They’re almost always part-funded by small membership fees, less small contributions from the students’ union (who also tend to lay down a few rules and guidelines such as that any student can join and that there be no financial corruption, no racism — nothing too onerous).Some universities — such as Birkbeck, Buckingham, the Courtauld and London Institutes — only have a handful. Others — such as Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Hull, Lancaster, Manchester and Oxbridge — have a hundred or more.They split into various kinds:

The sports clubs, which often field the university’s teams.

The academic clubs, which are usually course-related and are often run by a brown-noser in the department.

The bog-standard hobby and interest clubs that most universities have, including everything from sci-fi to film, photography to animal rights, Amnesty to the orchestra.

The political clubs — usually party-related and often fielding candidates for SU elections.

The religious clubs.

The international and cultural societies, which often provide a meeting place and a forum for particular ethnic groups (such as Afro-Caribbeans) and overseas students from a certain country.

The welfare groups, which, like the international and cultural societies exist to support minorities and special interest groups such as postgrads, mature students, students with families, and lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender students.

The off-the-wall and wacky clubs.

In the last category, it’s hard to believe that some of them actually do anything and weren’t set up just because someone though of an amusing name. For example, there are the various Odd Socs around the country (if they got together surely they could make some pairs), Bristol’s Flat Caps & Ferrets Society and Sunderland’s Hat Society.

If you have your own freakish fascination, you can bet there are other students out there somewhere who share your fetish and who may be only too keen to share it. Indeed, chances are they’ve already set up a club at some university to cater for your obsession. If it’s important to you, it may be a clincher when it comes to picking a university.However, if you find yourself sadly unique in your devotion to an unusual pastime, never fear. If you can persuade enough other students at your university to join your strange society, so long as it’s (more or less) legal, you may be able to start your own. Of course, it’s easier if it’s already there.

There are few times in anyone’s life that they get quite such a good opportunity to become involved with activities other than work, families and DIY as when they’re at university. Either they’re too busy, they don’t have access to the facilities, they’re too expensive, or they don’t know anyone else who’s interested.As a student, none of these excuses is valid.

And, while this is true for just about anything, it’s perhaps truest of all for sport.Student sports are some of the best in the world.​Every four years the World Student Games come around. Britain usually does pretty well (better than in most international sporting competitions) and many of the competitors are the same as those who turn up at the following Olympics.UK universities, meanwhile, compete against each other every year in competitions and leagues in every sport imaginable.Many of our greatest sporting heroes competed at university level before going on to greater fame. To name but a few: Harold Abrahams, Steve Backley, Sebastian Coe, Ted Dexter, Phil de Glanville, Tanni Grey, Gavin Hastings, Nasser Hussein, David Moorcroft, Victor Obogu, Matthew Pinsent, Steve Redgrave and David Weatherall.

And it’s not as if they only became good once they’d completed their studies. Will Carling, for instance, went straight from captaining his university rugby team to historic success captaining England’s.Out there now are tomorrow’s gold medallists and, as a student, you get to play alongside them or perhaps against them or, even, be them.

The Varsity Boat Race is a highlight of the national sporting calendar and it is genuine students tugging at those oars.These levels of achievement are pretty ordinary in many of the UK’s universities.But what if you’re no champion?These very high standards are no more than the tip of an iceberg of health and fitness, with some of the submerged parts being more used to sit-downs than sit-ups.At most universities even the worst athlete, the most feeble wimp, can participate just for fun.Different universities have different policies — sometimes it’s not even a matter of policy, it just turns out that way — but as often as not the emphasis is on sport for all rather than on sport for the bionic.

Sports are not necessarily a blokey thing either. Sure, there are the rugger buggers and the oarsmen oafs, but women’s sport is taken as seriously and played as competitively as anything the boys get up to with their funny shaped balls or when they shove their oars in.What makes students so good?Apart from the fact that there are so many of them (nearly a million students in the UK) and many of them are at an age of peak performance, it’s largely down to opportunity.

Many universities have vast tracts of land rolled, mowed and painted all in the name of sport. They have sports halls like airplane hangars and athletics tracks that would be the envy of most sizeable towns.Loughborough University — renowned for its sporting prowess, not to mention its sports-based courses — has five-star facilities that include four sports centres, two gyms, a dance studio, two swimming pools, seven squash courts, two floodlit all-weather pitches, an all-weather athletics stadium, acres of playing fields, the Dan Maskell tennis centre, multigyms, a martial arts dojo, badminton courts, plus equipment and playing areas for table-tennis, basketball, netball and many, many more. Locally, there are also opportunities for everything from watersports to pot-holing, riding to rambling. And all of them are absurdly cheap.

Loughborough’s facilities are among the best, but it’s far from the only university with enough sporting muscle to snatch, clean, and jerk even the laziest couch potato into activity. And often there’s no charge at all.For every sport, there’s a club or a team of like-minded enthusiasts ready to rumble. But you can’t play every sport at every university.

If you’re goofy for golf, for instance, don’t apply to City University, where the facilities in general aren’t bad — but being based in Central London, they’ve not been able to provide access to a golf course.You’d be better off at St Andrew’s, which not only has a cheap course for students, but you’re within putting distance of the Royal & Ancient Club and where golfing glory can even earn you a scholarship.Although there are the likes of Loughborough and Sheffield, whose amenities put the fun into funding, there are also places like Bath Spa University College where the tennis courts were turned into a car park, and Abertay Dundee with only a fitness room to call its own, and where students otherwise have to rely on what the town can offer.If you’re the sporty sort or, indeed, if you’re ever motivated to move a muscle, the huge difference in levels of sports facilities should play a part in bringing your favourite university to the top of your personal league.

It’s not only wandering minstrels that provide the music menu at universities. Many students — and not just music students — can knock out a tune or two for themselves.In fact, that’s how some of the best bands started — from Blur (Goldsmiths College) to Underworld (Cardiff Uni).​It’s not just a chance to meet a bassist and drummer (who’re also into your favoured mix of indie folk and garage) to complete your innovative new group. Universities (or more usually students’ unions) also provide the rooms and the opportunity to rehearse and the platform for your first (and maybe last) gig. Not everywhere offers the same opportunities though.

Of course, music’s not all about bands. Many universities have an orchestra, a choir, string quartets, even an opera group.

But as with bands, it’s not simply a matter of the other people, but the facilities, the rehearsal space and the potential audience.And again, tastes and facilities are not the same everywhere, so if music is your food of love, play on by picking the right university.Inevitably, extra-curricular music tends to have more tempo where there’s an up-beat academic music department.​Check out this Independent article "Seven best ways to get involved with music at university".

MUSIC VENUES​Check out a tour poster for any band and you’ll see the same venues listed time and again. Unless they’re supergroups who only do binocular gigs, many of those venues will be universities and SUs. Take Manchester University, for instance, where a list of gigs from the past couple of years reads like a pretty decent compilation album: Sugababes, Jurassic 5, Jill Scott, Nickleback, Roni Size, The Strokes, White Stripes, Coldplay, Moloko and many, many more.But big gigs may not be your preferred route to going deaf.In which case, you’ll appreciate some of the other universities. The ones that just don’t have a venue big enough or perhaps where they’re just not interested. The focus there is more on local bands, jazz nights, the students’ own bands or on trying to discover little-known talent (and failing).Then, of course, there’s classical music. Recitals, concerts, opera, choirs — at some universities melodies seem to seep from the stonework. At the Royal College of Music, students regularly burst into spontaneous performances — a bit like the Kids from Fame.If a university can’t offer your preferred strains of strings or bumping bass, there are always the local venues. The story’s the same, though — not everywhere has Birmingham’s NEC for megagigs, but nor do they all have the buskers on the beach at Brighton or the folk bands in the (real) Irish pubs of Belfast.

​MEDIA

Most universities have a student newspaper and many of them have been around for years — longer even than many of the nationals. They’re populated with eager student reporters desperate to get relevant experience so they can break into the profession when they graduate, alongside others, just as eager, doing it for the wheeze. But they don’t just need journos — people are needed to handle ad sales, distribution, design and so on, so there are opportunities galore.The styles of student papers vary as much as they do in Fleet Street — there are tabloidy gutter dwellers and high fallutin’ papers of record, propaganda sheets for the union or the university and independent bastions of integrity. Some universities, such as York, even have competing newspapers and many have not only newspapers, but arts magazines, creative writing magazines and even wood-wasters for individual clubs and societies.​Thanks to desktop publishing and colour printing, the standards reach professional heights (as the annual awards ceremonies show — yes, even student journos have their own Oscars), but also depths so low that the only place appropriate for some student papers is the toilet — although, fortunately, that’s a great place for them to get read. Captive audience, you see. (Gossip and what’s-on flyers tacked to the backs of loo cubicle doors are quite common and are known, inevitably, as bogsheets.)But the press don’t have a media monopoly.Many universities have their own radio stations. Sometimes they have FM licences and broadcast locally as well as on campus. But at other places, it’s a couple of guys playing their own records and transmitting a signal so weak that it barely makes it out of hearing range. Still, it’s better than nothing for trying out your fabadozie pop-picker DJ stylie.There’s even student TV and, even though they usually broadcast on a closed circuit and with a budget that even Channel 5 would consider tight, the conditions have forced some university stations to get pretty inventive.Not only are student media great fun to make — you have to wonder whether the readers, listeners and viewers enjoy it as much as the writers, editors and producers — they can be a big help in landing a job in the media. As often as not, rather than do a degree in media studies, you’d do better to study something totally different and throw your heart into the university newspaper, radio or TV station.If you’re thinking along these lines, be careful you don’t get landed working for a paper that’s still produced with a John Bull printing set and which reads like a school magazine where everyone played truant. Choose a university with facilities and a reputation in media.

​CHARITY

If you see a bunch of people dressed as tarts, vicars, nurses and Frankenstein’s monster pushing a hospital bed down a street, waving and rattling tins, there’s a good chance they’re students. If you see someone walking along being apparently followed by a gnome, there’s a good chance they’re both students.And if you see naked parachutists with water pistols, there’s a good chance they’re students, too.This isn’t only because students are weird. It’s often all in the dubious name of charity or ‘rag’, as most universities call the student organisation that arranges these and many similar stunts in an effort to raise funds for good causes.And it’s no mean feat. Some individual student rags — through sponsored events, sales of merchandise and rag mags (usually cheaply produced and stuffed with highly un-PC jokes) and other fund-raising activities which regularly push the boundaries of legality — raise over two-hundred thousand quid a year.It’s only the best — such as Loughborough — that hit that kind of target. Most do well to get into the tens of thousands but, given how poor students are, that’s not bad. Students’ own poverty has, however, seen a few rags dwindle and die.Much to the relief of lecturers, university authorities, the local population and the police, often the effort is focused on a single week (rag week) of mayhem and disruptive antics.By the way, if any of this sounds familiar, the tame-by-comparison Comic Relief was inspired by student rags (with a bit of Band Aid thrown in).

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​COMMUNITY ACTION

Rags may be fun with the excuse of doing good, but at many universities the students do good with the excuse that it’s also fun. Some community action organisations in universities involve hundreds, even thousands of students in projects that help the elderly, the sick, kids, people with disabilities, the homeless and deprived, prisoners, environmental projects or the local community. They’re run by students (working with community groups) and often there’s a student sabbatical to oversee them.Hull University and Leeds are especially lively, while at some universities there’s no such programme at all and, all too often, the town-gown relationship suffers as a result.

​DRAMA AND ARTS

Universities often have certain cliques. There are the political hacks, the sporty yahoos and there are the thesps. Not every university has them, but those that do are often quite pleased about it because they often provide high standard entertainment, producing and acting in plays, musicals, light opera, dance, comedy revues and stand-up.Where there’s a drama course, there’s usually a glut of thesps — or luvvies, if you prefer — not least because there’s usually a well-equipped theatre and rehearsal rooms.But thesps don’t need theatres — they’ll find anywhere to perform, from halls to lecture rooms, or even outside. However, a theatre’s usually a good starting point to prick theatrical sensibilities and get the star-struck strutting their stuff upon whatever makeshift stage they can find. Some universities, especially if they don’t have a theatre, never manage to lure the thesps into the limelight.The highlight of the theatrical year for students is usually the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where there is a proud tradition of performing student productions to average audiences of three American tourists and a dog.Student theatre is often a lot more professional than your regular am dram and it’s a classic example of an opportunity for those with a little talent (or sometimes a lot) to have a go at something they’d never risk professionally — although many, in fact, do. That doesn’t just go for the actors, but for the directors, designers, lighting technicians and other backstage boys and girls too.

​THEATRES

Professional theatre isn’t a luxury that students can afford every night, but most theatres offer serious discounts on student tickets if the house isn’t full. In London, this can mean students get into West End shows at the last minute for under a tenner.Elsewhere... well, many towns have theatres showing nothing but summer specials and Xmas pantos (starring former soap actors and other D-list celebs) with nothing but Alan Ayckbourn plays in between.On the other hand, companies like the RSC, Cheek-by-Jowl and Shared Experience take superb shows on tour in what used to be a tokenistic, but is now a genuine, effort to get the arts out of the capital and into the regions.Meanwhile, in rooms above pubs and community workshops, there’s a wealth of talent to be discovered very cheaply. (As well as a wealth of crap.)Although they’re outside term-time, a mention must go to the Edinburgh Festivals — the world’s biggest arts jamboree, where every nook and cranny becomes a theatre. It’s a great place for students to watch (or star in) drama and comedy, not to mention find work.But often some of the best theatres in town are at the universities themselves, with top-flight stages and wings, lighting rigs and backstage facilities. They attract not only a regular round of visits from touring companies, but plenty of student productions too.Student drama is often every bit as good as professional work done on bigger budgets and charging a lot more at the box office. After all, there are plenty of drama students out there and a lot of actors first catch the stage bug at university.On the other hand, some student productions are an embarrassment to everyone involved and the university ‘theatres’ that host them are sometimes barely worthy of the name.

​RELIGIONS

Universities are a slice of life and in every slice you have your fruits, your nuts and your cherries. Push doesn’t mean to imply anything by that other than that all the variety of life — including a range of religions — is represented in UK universities. Some, such as Durham (with its huge cathedral and historical Anglican ties) have a strong Christian presence (especially at St John’s College). Others, for some reason, attract large populations of Jews (Manchester and Leeds, especially), Muslims (the School of Pharmacy, for instance), Hindus and every other flavour of faith you can imagine.Most universities have at least one chaplain, usually an Anglican to start with, then perhaps adding others such as Roman Catholics, ecumenical, interdenominational, Methodists, Presbyterians, Orthodox and Reform Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and so on as necessary.Some universities have a chapel, too, and often a mosque or a prayer room — and, of course, there may be other worship shops locally.Depending on whether there are enough god-squadders, there may well be religious clubs of every hue. In fact, you sometimes need to watch out for religious groups on campus — sects and cults have been known to target students.Religion may be something you can carry with you, but if the trappings of a particular place to pray and fellow believers to do it with are important to you, you may want to rule out anywhere that doesn’t meet your creed needs.

​DEBATING​For some students, seminars and SU meetings provide more than enough argumentative chit chat, but some universities also have a talk-shop that’s more than your regular club or society. There are, for example, the Oxbridge debating unions — not to be confused with their students’ unions — where formal debates take place (often in black tie) before the audience votes on who won and then goes home and forgets about it. There’s often a fairly right-wing flavour to it all.Oxford Union, in particular, has attracted some pretty awesome names either to debate or just to give talks, including, for instance, Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela and Kermit the Frog. Many former Union Presidents — such as Ted Heath and Benazir Bhutto — have gone on to be as famous as the guests.These debating unions don’t only debate. They have headquarters like smaller but posher versions of most SUs, with a bar, library and a few social facilities. They charge for membership (none too cheap) and some students find them quite elitist (and not in a good way).

A few other universities, especially the Oxbridge reject universities, have similar cosy arrangements (the Durham Union Society, for instance). Other universities, however, have debating clubs (or ‘mooting’ societies, as they’re sometimes known) that are more down-to-earth, such as Aberdeen University’s ‘Debater’.

ANYTHING ELSE

​It’s not just clubs and societies that you can set up. Universities weren’t born with radio stations and theatre groups. Some student started them up once upon a time (usually with SU funding) and others kept them going. Whatever your interest, the right university for you is a stimulating environment in which to get your act together.Every university has a unique set of clubs, groups, and organisations supporting students’ interests as diverse as dogs and dandelions.

What is more, these activities don’t exist in a vacuum. They affect the atmosphere of the place, define it even. Somewhere with active Christian groups feels different from somewhere without them and somewhere with thesps in every nook feels different from somewhere where the nooks are occupied by hacks or rugger buggers or business students.

​Choose a university where your interests are catered for and you’ll usually find the atmosphere slots right into place too.​